


my soul, winged and wounded

by Azmera



Series: The Dynamite Club [4]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Airbending & Airbenders, Anarchism, Gen, Prison, Prison Abolition, prison break - Freeform, seriously the white lotus prisons are a crime against humanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 22:44:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20104834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azmera/pseuds/Azmera
Summary: Two weeks after Harmonic Convergence, Zaheer gets a visitor.





	my soul, winged and wounded

Two weeks had come and gone, and he was beginning to suspect he was going mad. Locked away from the sky, trapped in this miserable prison cell… But the others would have survived far longer, he told himself. The others could handle this torture. So he could as well.

He knew, the moment he woke with airbending, that it was due to Harmonic Convergence, and that it was the spirits’ way of blessing his cause. He knew, the moment he felt the free air on his face and then had it ripped away, that he would use his airbending to escape.

He knew all of this, that is, until the Avatar appeared in his cell.

Not as a visitor, formally logged with the Lotus, deposited at his door by way of the bridge. No, she simply dug in straight through the floor, bursting up out of a rough-hewn tunnel with all the grace of a newborn cat-owl.

He looked at her. It was nearly pitch black in the cell, the better to weaken him when food was delivered, but he could see the expression on her face. She was grinning madly.

“Knock knock!” she said.

What was he supposed to say, when the _Avatar_ literally popped out of the ground in his prison cell?

“I’m Korra,” she said, her smile dimming.

He blinked at her.

“I’m the Avatar?”

“I… am aware,” he said slowly. The White Lotus hadn’t given him much by way of reading material, but they always took a sort of vindictive pleasure in showing him how the Avatar was thriving, doing the bidding of her government puppetmasters. Crushing rebellions, driving out spirits. “I’m sorry, Avatar, but what are you doing here?”

She squinted at him. “It’s dark in here,” she said. “Want a skylight?”

He barely had a chance to react before she punched one hand up and tore a hole in the roof of the cell, the metal screeching in protest as it curled against its nature. The warm golden sun of summer spilled into his cell. It had been so long, he thought, since he had felt the warmth of the sun on his skin. And it was far brighter than he’d remembered, almost blinding. That had to be the reason his eyes were watering. Nothing else.

“I appreciate it, Avatar,” he said, “but won’t this be… noticeable? To the White Lotus?” The White Lotus who you serve, he wanted to say. But didn’t, because he’d seen pictures of Amon skewered in the Bay, he’d heard reports of what happened during Harmonic Convergence. If he could avoid poking the proverbial porcupine-bear, he would. But that noise had to have alerted someone.

“I’ll fix it in a minute,” she said, with a careless flick of her wrist. “I just wanted to talk, and it’s so _dreary_ in here. I’m amazed you’ve lasted fifteen years.” She looked around. “Bit of overkill, though, isn’t it? For a nonbender?” She was smiling again, conspiratorially.

Despite himself, Zaheer felt annoyance flare up inside him. She was underestimating him, just like every other bender he’d fought. He made himself laugh, feigning self-confidence. “Oh, you’ve just never seen me in action, Avatar.”

Her smile turned into more of a smirk. An I-know-something-you-don’t look. “I’m sure. And it would be a thing to see, wouldn’t it. Considering you’re not _just_ a nonbender anymore, are you?”

He shifted away from her minutely. “I don’t know what you mean, Avatar.”

“Please, call me Korra,” the Avatar said. Her gaze sharpened. “And let’s not waste each others’ time, Zaheer.”

“Very well, _Korra_.” His eyes narrowed. “How did you know?”

“I felt it. That’s actually how we found you.”

“We?”

“My family and I.”

“I was unaware that you… possessed such abilities,” he admitted. She was being cagey. There was something she wasn’t telling him. There had to be. Her family? What could she mean by that? He would have heard if Chief Tonraq and Healer Senna were anywhere nearby. The Chief certainly would have objected to _this _little outing.

“Well, it was more Tikivik and Jinora, but I noticed how distressed you were.”

TIkivik he hadn’t heard of, but Jinora… that was Tenzin’s oldest. A chosen family, then. Interesting. But that he had been putting out such palpable distress, and unconsciously at that… He pressed his lips into a thin line, and shook his head. He would deal with his unruly emotions later. “Why are you here, if not to kill me?”

The Avatar sighed. “Listen. I know who you are, and I know why you’re here. But I hate that anyone thought this was acceptable. I hate that anyone has been locked up in a prison for fifteen years. Prisons are abhorrent, and _this_ one… what you did— well, look. I’m trying to make the world a better place. And I want your help.”

His head was spinning. Prison abolition. Direct disagreement with the White Lotus. His _help_. None of that was what he’d expected to hear from the Avatar, the little girl he’d almost kidnapped, the world’s highest authority.

“I… I’m the reason you were kept in that White Lotus compound,” he said, grasping for something, _anything_ familiar in this conversation.

“No, the White Lotus is the reason for that,” Korra said patiently. “You tried to kidnap me, yeah, but they immediately jumped to the most intense solution. They could’ve posted guards. They could have moved our home. But they wanted to control me, so they put me in a prison. You aren’t responsible for their bad decisions.” She gave him another odd smile. “And if you don’t buy that, look at it like this. I escaped my prison. You’re still here. Sounds to me like you served your time.”

“So… so why… are you here?”

You’ve served your time. Prisons are abhorrent. Nobody deserves this. All of those were leading to one thing. But he wanted—needed—to hear her say it.

“I need your help, like I said. So I’m breaking you out.”

_Freedom_.

He licked his lips. He could almost taste it, on the air coming from his new skylight. On the sunshine pouring in. It was dancing in the Avatar’s eyes, in her smile. “Okay.”

The Avatar clapped her hands together. “Great! So— how do you want to do this? The way I figure, you can just slip out now, with me. The others are waiting at the base of the mountain. But if you’d rather make a _statement_, really ruffle some feathers, you can do this on your own. I’m sure you were already planning. We’ll still be here to pick you up when you escape, and we can help indirectly if you want.”

_When_. The Avatar already assumed that he would make it out. The thought— her faith in his abilities— almost made him smile. He had been planning, but it was a slow process, involving the right combination of guards and getting a decent handle on his own bending abilities. And when freedom was within his grasp he would be a fool not to take it.

Every moment he waited was another moment _his_ family was behind bars.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Nothing to take with you?” The Avatar looked around the cell, and winced. “Well,” she said. “You’d fit right in with the Monks.”

“An unforeseen benefit,” Zaheer said dryly. Looking at his cell in the sunlight, with fresh eyes, he realized how small it was, how empty. A cot, a metal toilet, bare stone floors. No books, no papers, no personal items to speak of. Fifteen years he’d spent in this box. He was more than ready to leave.

“All right.” The Avatar— Korra; if she was freeing him he could at least give her the courtesy of using her name— gestured carefully, and the hole in the ceiling repaired itself. “It’s a patch job,” she said. “It’d take ages for me to close it up the same as it was. But they won’t realize that until they’ve already noticed you’re gone.”

“That’s fine,” he said. The loss of sunlight was jarring, but he would see it again soon enough.

“Well.” Korra gestured to the hole she’d popped out of. “After you.”

The shaft was narrow, maybe three feet wide, and a nearly straight drop, the only handholds the craggy walls. It was clearly a quick job, and when the— Korra— sealed the entrance above them (with considerably more care than she’d taken with the ceiling, it seemed) it was almost enough to make him claustrophobic. Almost. If he hadn’t just spent fifteen years in a stifling prison cell. If he hadn’t known that he would be free in minutes. So he slowly, carefully, inched his way down the shaft. It was humid and pitch black, but the Avatar was making her own way down above him, so he had only one direction to go.

“I didn’t want to risk them seeing me go in from the side,” she grumbled, her voice echoing oddly in the enclosed space. “So I had to dig straight up from ground level. Three _hundred_ feet. It took me _hours_.” He couldn’t think of a response, so they continued in silence.

After what felt like an eternity in darkness, the only sound their breathing, he felt the walls start to slope. And then, suddenly—

He spilled out onto the ground, as ungraceful as the Avatar had been when she appeared in his cell.

He stumbled to his feet, a free man for the first time in fifteen years.

The _air_. It circled and spun around him, as playful as a wolf-rabbit pup, whispering to him of places it had been, places he could _go_. He tipped his head back to see the free sky for the first time in fifteen years, and—

_Oh_.

“What?” Korra said, cocking her head, and he realized he’d voiced his thoughts.

He swallowed. “I just… I forgot. How big the sky is.”

It stretched in every direction, a blue so deep and infinite he thought he could lose himself in it.

Korra smiled at him. “And it’s all yours.”

**Author's Note:**

> I might add to this later, show the other prison breaks. They don't need to be quite so dramatic in this universe.
> 
> Title from "The Song of Despair," by Pablo Neruda.


End file.
